


realize your innocence is home, become your own king

by Ingi



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blue Mountains | Ered Luin, Feelings Realization, FiKi Week 2018, Fíli & Kíli Live, Fíli and Kíli's Epic Bond, Innocence, Kings & Queens, M/M, Snippets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 22:17:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15301221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ingi/pseuds/Ingi
Summary: They are not born golden.





	realize your innocence is home, become your own king

**Author's Note:**

> And condensing the prompts for Sunday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday - here I come (late)! (This was originally meant to be four entirely different, and separate fics, but- oh, well.)  
> Prompts in the order they appear in the fic: " **Innocence** ~~or Betrayal~~ " (Friday), " **Ered Luin** ~~or War of the Ring~~ " (Saturday), " **Realizations** ~~or Anniversary~~ " (Sunday), " ~~Princes or~~ **Kings** " (Thursday).
> 
> (The title comes from a terrible attempt to name-drop all the prompts, because I had no better ideas at the moment. _Regret_.)
> 
> ETA: [shinigami714](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinigami714) made [some incredible artwork](https://shinigami714.tumblr.com/post/178886318466/art-by-me-writing-by-when-legends-come-true) for this fanfic for Durin's Day!

They are not born golden.

There are no prophecies about them, no one who sees them and knows they will grow to be extraordinary. Not at first.

Oh, everyone knows that they will be great. It is only a mark of their lineage. Fíli of the light-haired hair of his oldest ancestors, Fíli of the quiet contemplation and ordered mind. Kíli, born with his eyes open, so easily startled into laughter, so easily loved.

But from the moment when they first meet—which is, in practicality, a few minutes after Kíli’s birth—, the potential for something extraordinary takes its first breath.

Dwarves are, as a whole, static. Take a dwarf and tell them, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. They will understand it how they understand weapons: a poorly-made axe is nothing but a collection of weapon pieces, and cannot really be named an axe. A well-made axe, however, is a single, seamlessly working unit. This is the kind of intrinsic change dwarves understand.

Do not try to teach them about the other kinds. Stone-born, they are, but they often forget how the stones that make them come to be.

Fíli and Kíli, as individuals, have the markings of greatness, just like those who came before them. _FíliandKíli_ , however, are meant to be _extraordinary_. It is obvious, for anyone who cares to look.

It goes unnoticed.

 

 

 

They grow and Ered Luin grows with them.

Ered Luin is no real home for the mourning, but they are not such. They chase each other in the streets and what their laughter brings is not echoes of better times, but something else, something new and still beating raw, or old but never buried.

They are the heirs of a disgraced line. Many curse their uncle’s footsteps as he walks, but they don’t learn of this until much later—when they’re older, more awake—, because the very sames who turn their backs on their bloodline will often stop in the streets to half-bow to Fíli, tell Kíli about their family and their craft.

“Would you really want to live anywhere else?” Kíli asks, as they lay under the stars on the nights too warm and inviting to stay in their beds.

Fíli keeps quiet for many moons, too conscious of how every answer sounds like a betrayal. Finally, days before they are to leave for the Shire, he rests his head on his brother’s chest—a hand curling against Kíli’s ribs—and sighs.

“Erebor is meant to be our home,” he says, because it is the truth.

Kíli considers this, and Fíli can feel him smiling in the beat of silence, as clearly as if he were looking.

“We will _make it_ home,” his brother decides, and Fíli feels _himself_ smiling, too.

 

 

 

They don’t believe in destiny.

They are yet too young for that, or perhaps too late to. This is, often, their greatest strength. But in some things—

Fíli grows with the full certainty of what Kíli is in his own bones. But as it is not destiny, he does not consider inevitability, or rightness. He braids his own hair until Kíli is old enough to fight him for it, ignores the beat of his own heart like he rarely does anything else.

Kíli knows only what he’s feeling in the very moment he pauses to consider it. This is true in regards to Fíli, too.

Under the stars of their childhood, but so very far away from home—either of them—, Kíli idly chases a thought and stumbles upon knowledge that he had always had, but never bothered looking for. He half-raises, gulping in the cool night air, and turns to gaze at his brother.

Fíli—almost asleep by now, blond hair splayed on Kíli’s right shoulder as they lean on each other for their turn of night watch—gazes back and blinks, tired and unfocused. And Kíli understands something else, then, as immediate and unexpected as his previous revelation.

When he leans in, Fíli meets him halfway.

 

 

 

They are kings before they are wed.

They are kings, in fact, from nearly the very moment they are born, but they will only realize this later. Erebor is golden and old and altogether weak against the power of their combined wills, and it is turned into _home_ without quite meaning to, and the home it becomes recognizes all who want it to, not only themselves.

And they are wed, and it is only in their finest clothes and braids, the royal jewelry, that every dwarf that watches them can finally _see_. Fíli and Kíli stand before the throne, hands clasped, grinning. They stand as kings-to-be and they are the same as they’ve always been.

Take a dwarf and try to teach them all the kinds of change. Show them the absence of it — they’ll understand.

And quite some time later, Fíli and Kíli stand before the throne again, and crowns are laid upon their heads, and weapons are laid at their feet, and it is but a formality.

They are the most extraordinary kings Erebor has ever seen.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS NOT WHAT I MEANT TO WRITE AT ALL. Someday I'll write what I've _actually_ planned to, I swear.
> 
> Check out the [lovely tumblr](http://gatheringfiki.tumblr.com/tagged/fikiweek2018) organizing these events, and the other fanworks for Fiki Week 2018!


End file.
